Find your routers MAC address

Written by Johan, published at Oct. 1, 2020, 10:10 a.m.

You can translate the MAC address of your router to find out the vendor of the router. This trick works in your home, on any public WiFi and at your office for example.

To find out the MAC address of your router, you can simply use the ARP protocol. ARP is used to translates MAC addresses to IP addresses.

The command is the same for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, but the output may differ. Just type in "arp -a" in your terminal. This will list all known MAC/IP combinations known by your computer.


netlookup@netlookup ~ % arp -a
? (10.5.1.1) at 88:5c:47:12:ca:40 on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
? (10.5.1.125) at (incomplete) on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
? (10.5.1.144) at 8:62:66:15:52:62 on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
? (10.5.1.222) at a6:56:9b:6b:b6:8 on en0 ifscope [ethernet]
? (10.5.1.255) at ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff on en0 ifscope [ethernet]

If this case, 10.5.1.1 is the gateway, and the MAC address 88:5c:47:12:ca:40 can be translated to Alcatel Lucent using our search tool on the front page.

If there is no record for your gateway, you can simply try to ping the gateway, and if you get an response, the MAC address will show up using "arp -a" command.


See all articles - Find the vendor for a given MAC address

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